


Cinders

by Lorca_McAlias



Category: Nancy Drew - Carolyn Keene
Genre: Background Carson Drew/Mr. Shannon, Cinderella Elements, Crack, Dancing, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Multi, Name Changes, Party, Post-Divorce, Silly, minor slut shaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:46:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27126736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorca_McAlias/pseuds/Lorca_McAlias
Summary: Nancy may be a widower's daughter, but Deirdre is sure she's the real Cinderella here since she failed to steal Nancy's room. Neither of them marry the king's son, the US being a republic and all.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Nancy Drew & Hannah Gruen





	Cinders

**Author's Note:**

> So...sometimes I watch book reviews for books I haven't read and am not actually planning to read either. One of those books is Once Upon a Crime, an official Nancy Drew Cinderella retelling where Nancy is doing some volunteer work but her boss picks on her. My thought at the time was: Why the hell would you use that as the set up for your Nancy-as-Cinderella plot? I then started writing this, and ran directly into why they didn't use the obvious set-up.

As the saying goes, when you have only one lawyer in town, he's usually barely making a living and is just hanging on. Once you have _two_ law firms in town, we discover that both lawyers are now quite prosperous members of the community.

River Heights had Mr. Drew and Mr. Shannon, and they were prosperous indeed. Another saying says money can't buy happiness, and that was true of this lot as well. Let's quantify that a bit: there are certain sources of unhappiness which money can solve. For example, if someone in your family has diabetes but none of you have health insurance and you're having trouble affording insulin, a big pile of money would get you a lot less worries and a lot more time together.

Alas, Mrs Drew did not have diabetes. She had a neurodegenerative disease which, at the time, had no know treatment, making the questions of who's paying for the treatment irrelevant. And when she died, she left her family not just in mourning, but worried that the same fate might one day befall Nancy.

Looking at the Shannons, we find a similar contrast of things money can and can't do. Deirdre's parents would always get her whatever she asked for, but Deirdre sometimes suspected that her own parents preferred Nancy to her. Sometimes she even thought they'd be right to, that she really had nothing going for her that Nancy wasn't already doing better. A family therapist could help with that, and those do cost money. But for that, Deirdre would first have to admit that she had problems and then tell another person about them, neither of which money can do.

The one exception to all this two-handedness was Mrs. Shannon, who did actually manage to buy herself love. Real love too, not just sex. See, if she hadn't been able to afford yoga classes she never would have met her yoga instructor, and then she couldn't have run off with him.

Despite often being at odds with each other in their professional lives, after hours Mr. Drew and Mr. Shannon actually got along much better than their offspring. They might have even combined their offices if not for the fact that that would make it harder for their clients to sue each other.

And so we find the two men at the classiest bar in River Heights. (Well, classiest out of two, and it's not like the other place was falling apart.) Mr. Shannon was there to get drunk, and Mr. Drew was there for Mr. Shannon.

“You seeing someone?” Mr. Shannon asked out of the blue.

“If I were you'd know by now.”

“Not true, you never tell me anything about your love life. I know you were married, but nothing after that.”

Mr. Drew threw back the rest of the wine he'd slowly been sipping from up till then. “There was, as you say, nothing after that.”

“Really? A handsome fellow like yourself single all this time? That's a waste. What do you say we fix that.”

Despite knowing that Mr. Shannon was sloshed, Mr. Drew was still taken aback at this. “I'm not interested.” he managed to say.

“You want to spend every night sleeping alone from here to eternity?”

“You're drunk and grieving. I would be taking advantage.”

The next morning Mr Drew woke up alone in his own bed, and for the first time in years regretted it.

When the Shannons' divorce proceedings actually started Deirdre was of age, making the question of who would get custody irrelevant. That didn't stop her from telling everyone who would listen that she wanted to live with her father, not her slut of a mother. And then Mom somehow got the house. Deirdre had her pride, and living with someone who she just called a slut to half the town probably wouldn't be very pleasant anyway, so she started packing her bags. And then her father announced that rather than go to some hotel while they look for a new place to stay, he was temporarily moving in with the Drews. Deirdre counted out her own savings, found they were lacking, and had to decide whether it would be the greater blow to the aforementioned pride to live in Nancy Drew's house or go on a begging spree.

In the end Mom and the yoga instructor wanted to move in before Deirdre had found other accommodations. And as Mr. Shannon had already taken the guest bedroom Deirdre ended up sleeping on an air mattress in the study. She told whoever would listen that she was being treated like Cinderella, forced to stay in some study while her rival got a real bedroom.

“You think you have it bad?” said whoever would listen. “My parents named me whoever would listen. They didn't even capitalize it!”

“This isn't the Misery Olympics.” Deirdre retorted. That's actually a pretty healthy attitude, even if Deirdre was kind of whining here. “If I help you change your name, will you stop bringing it up every single time?”

Miss listen considered jokingly saying “Maybe...” but then realized that Deirdre might be able to help change her name for real.

“If you really could, then yeah, I would.”

She chose Eva Wood for her new name. Deirdre, really getting into this lawyer-y stuff, then attempted to bill Eva, at which point Eva pointed out that they already agreed that Deirdre's reward would be not having to listen to her complain about her old name. The name stuff also took up enough of Deirdre's time that she was still living in Carson Drew's house by the time Carson Drew left. On a business trip, that is. There were now four real bedrooms in a house with four people, but that servant lady, Hannah, was opposed to the obvious solution because Mr. Drew wasn't gone that long and his room was full of private stuff and she didn't want to play musical chairs with the beds and yadda yadda. Hannah's room was pretty nice. If she wanted someone to stay on the air mattress in the study, she could be that person.

Mr. Shannon agreed, but Nancy was opposed. “Hannah lives here. _You_ keep saying you're going to move out.”

But Hannah gave in pretty quickly, which puzzled Nancy.

“I have faith that Deirdre will move out soon,” she later explained, “and in the meantime I don't want to cause strife between her father and yours. I've never known your father to be lonely, but lately he has a spring in his step that wasn't there before.”

Nancy had to concede that this was true, as much as she didn't get it. As far as she was concerned the Shannons were all equally Shannon-y.

Well, the next day at dinner Deirdre yelled at Hannah because she didn't like how the food was seasoned. But if Hannah could give up her room for a bit for the sake of Mr. Drew's life happiness, she could also put up with a little yelling for the sake of Mr. Drew's life happiness.

And so forth, et cetera.

Dear readers, be careful! You might say to yourself “I would never give up my room and let myself be yelled at and X and Y and Z just to keep the peace”, but these things do not come at you all at once, but one at a time. When it starts slow, you can easily find yourself putting up with more than you planned to.

The change in the situation came, ironically enough, from a message saying the situation would be staying the same. Mr. Drew's business trip was taking longer than expected, and he wouldn't be home in time for a party to which he and Mr. Shannon had been invited. Deirdre had barely mentioned the idea that she could use Mr. Drew's invitation now that he wasn't going to when Nancy snatched the letter from her hands, declared no-one was using Carson Drew's name to get into the party but Carson Drew, and threw it in the fireplace. To the, uh, _surprise_ of everyone present, as that's not how Nancy usually handles such things.

She did rather effectively kill all discussion about who would get the invite, which could be said to keep the peace. Sort of.

A few days later when Mr. Shannon had already left for the party and Deirdre was off doing Deirdre things, Nancy took Hannah aside and showed her Mr. Drew's very unburned invitation.

“I used slight of hand to swap it for some piece of scrap paper.” she said. “I think you should go. After all Deirdre's put you through, you deserve it.”

Nancy then went to her closet and brought out a beautiful silver dress – in Hannah's size. Well, there wasn't much point in refusing then, was there?

The party was held at a high-end center with art deco inspired decor. Hannah's dress, while high-end, was not art deco inspired, but then neither were the clothes of the other guests. Also, the ones nearest to the door were staring at her with looks of admiration, confusion, or some mixture of the two. Luckily Mr. Shannon wasn't in this group, having apparently made his way further into the center.

River Heights might be a two-lawyer town, but everybody most certainly did not know everybody in the most literal sense of the word. And all the servants did not know all the people who get invited to parties like these, and vice versa. So Hannah thought she might have seen the equally lovely lady who came up to her and asked her to dance around town before, but she didn't rack her brain trying to figure out who she was. But then –

“WHAT THE F*** ARE YOU DOING YOU MOTHERF***ERS!”

It was … someone else she didn't know. Although come to think of it, her current dance partner did look a lot like the woman formerly known as Mrs. Shannon. That must make the yelling man the yoga instructor.

Dear readers, take note. If you're having an affair with someone married, that means you're in love with someone who's willing to have an affair.

Hannah just laughed at the absurdity of it all, and went to find someone else to dance with.


End file.
